---
title: Jasco: Eckart Zollner's 2014 Trends - Developing Telecoms
description: Eckart Zollner of Jasco predicts how Africa's fibre market will evolve in 2014.
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date: 2014-12-10T14:42:05Z
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A key investment requirement remains on the terrestrial fibre side, specifically fibre backhaul, linking the land-locked countries in Africa to the coastal countries and the undersea cable landing stations.

A solid and resilient (redundant ring configuration) fibre-optic backbone is the pre-requisite for any countries’ connectivity to the rest of the world, especially to strong economies and leading internet hosting nodes. A close second priority is metropolitan fibre optic rings that are able to connect government and business to the regional and global broadband infrastructure.

Fibre backhaul is the pre-requisite to many other technologies and delivery mechanisms which will do well in Africa, such as LTE and microwave last mile technology. Applications and data volumes are set to explode in the market and all require a solid underlying delivery network which is able to transport high speed broadband reliably.

Regional, national and international connectivity is the key to providing the fastest and shortest connection between data consumption and data stores such as CDN networks, storage servers, application servers or point to point connections. For the broadband industry to become successful in Africa, it has to be able to provide optimal and affordable routing, develop local content and content hubs as well as local applications which are stored and served locally.

The technology that is driving the ICT industry has reached an exciting phase and has proven the ability to change people’s lives in emerging economies. Investments into underlying delivery networks is of key importance in order to move the beneficiation through modern ICT technology from currently a small percentage of the population in Africa to the vast majority, so as to provide the required educational, healthcare and economic boost that Africa so desperately needs.

Eckart Zollner is the Head of Business Development at Jasco ICT Solutions.

[Click here to read more 2014 Trends](https://developingtelecoms.com/business/opinion.html)

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